LONDON, March 8 (Reuters) - Japan lags behind all countries in addressing the gender gap for top level executives, according to a global survey which found that the rest of Asia has more women in senior management roles than Europe.

The report from consulting firm Grant Thornton International released on Thursday on time for International Women's Day found that 38 percent of companies worldwide have no women in senior management, a figure unchanged since 2004.

"It is disappointing that the participation of women in senior business management has not increased more dramatically over the last three years," said April Mackenzie, a director at Grant Thornton International.

"It is however encouraging to see some of the Asian economies leading the way," she added.

Nearly 70 percent of businesses in Asian countries boast high ranking women, while just over half of European businesses have women in top roles.

Japan, the world's second largest economy, came in last place with just a quarter of businesses reporting women in senior positions.

The Philippines has made the best progress, with 97 percent of businesses reporting women in senior roles.

The survey looked at responses from 7,200 privately held businesses in 32 countries, representing 81 percent of global GDP.

Four out of five of the countries with the lowest figures were in Europe: 27-42 percent of businesses in the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Germany and Italy have senior positions filled by women.

Top-ranking Philippines has been boosted by women in high profile positions, such as president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

Other Asian countries which fared well include mainland China, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Thailand. Over 80 percent of businesses in these countries say they have women in senior jobs.

In countries which are failing to address the gender gap at management level, business and public role models could hold the key to change, Mackenzie said.

She pointed out the success of German chancellor Angela Merkel, Indra Nooyi, the new CEO of PepsiCo Inc and Anne Lauvergeon, head of French nuclear group Areva.

Amid the controversy surrounding Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo’s denial that the Japanese military forced foreign women into sexual slavery during World War II, Japan’s conservative newspapers such as the Yomiuri Shimbun and Sankei Shimbun have supported Abe’s stance as of March 7.

In connection with a nonbinding resolution introduced early February to the U.S. House of Representatives that would urge Tokyo to apologize for the so-called comfort women issue, the Yomiuri Shimbun claimed that there was no documentary evidence found by the Japanese government to prove the Japanese military systematically searched for potential comfort women. Regarding a 1993 statement by then chief cabinet secretary Yohei Kono, containing an official apology and acknowledging the involvement of Japanese military authorities in the establishment of "comfort stations," the newspaper said that it was natural for lawmakers from Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to demand a correction of the Kono statement. The Sankei Shimbun agreed, saying, "To recover the honor of Japan, what is needed is the courage to truthfully talk about the matter of the comfort women with time and patience."

A New York Times editorial on March 6, however, slammed the Japanese government, saying that "Japan is only dishonored by such efforts to contort the truth." In relation to remarks by Abe that he had no intention to apologize even if U.S. lawmakers pass the resolution, the U.S. daily suggested that the Japanese government is now trying to reduce the crime to which it once admitted. The Japanese daily Asahi Shimbun also urged Abe to watch his words and not make remarks which could cause unnecessary misunderstanding.

According to the Mainichi Shimbun on March 7, conservatives from the LDP cancelled a plan to demand Abe to "correct" the Kono statement. The newspaper reported that Abe’s aides persuaded these lawmakers to abandon their efforts, citing the potential negative political effects of such a campaign.

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - Indie distributor Picture This! Entertainment has acquired North American rights to the Taiwanese gay-themed drama "Eternal Summer."

Leste Chen's feature revolves around two college-age childhood friends whose relationship is put to the test when a girl takes an interest in one of them. Her presence causes a conflict that unearths their long-suppressed feelings for each other.

"Summer" is Chen's sophomore feature after his 2005 horror film "The Heirloom." It won the best new performer prize for Bryant Chang at Taipei's 2006 Golden Horse Awards.

The film has appeared at the Tokyo International Film Festival and the Hong Kong Lesbian & Gay Film Festival. The distributor said it will screen at North American festivals before a theatrical release this year.

PRIME MINISTER Shinzo Abe's attempt to finesse the Japanese government's role in forcing about 200,000 Asian women to work as sex slaves during World War II is worse than unfortunate. It is counterproductive — and the best person to repair the damage is Emperor Akihito himself.

Abe took office trying to improve relations with China and South Korea, but he has now torpedoed them by pandering to the Japanese right wing's most disgusting tendencies toward historical revisionism. With Asia in an uproar, Abe insisted there was no backtracking on the nation's remorse. No one will be mollified. The incident sets back regional peace and security — not to mention the national interests of the United States, which lie in fostering far closer Asian cooperation to deal with issues such as North Korean nuclear disarmament.

The insistence by Japan's extreme nationalists that their country has "apologized enough" for its wartime atrocities, while its politicians and ersatz historians regularly attempt to downplay or simply falsify historical fact, is supremely self-defeating. Moreover, it plays into the insatiable appetite of some Chinese and South Korean leaders to exploit wartime grievances for their own political purposes. Matters have been made worse inside Japan by intimidation against politicians and others who have dared to speak out against official visits to Yasukuni Shrine, a memorial to the nation's war dead, including several war criminals.

Japan is a peace-loving democracy, and its heightened self-assurance on the global stage is a welcome development — at least when its historical obstinacy doesn't get in the way. The awful truth is that nearly 62 years after the end of World War II, true amends have not been made with South Korea and China. The ruling Liberal Democratic Party's failure to discipline its World War II- atrocity minimizers has damaged Japan's international reputation by undermining the 1995 apology of (Socialist) Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama. And because it erodes Tokyo's ability to be an effective partner in Asia, Japan's reluctance to fully acknowledge its wartime behavior has hampered the potential of the U.S.-Japanese alliance.

The person who could do the most to reconcile the people of Japan and their neighbors with the past is Akihito, the son of wartime emperor Hirohito. He is also the one person who could lift this issue above the political fray. In 1992 in Beijing, he spoke eloquently about his nation's tainted past. "There was an unfortunate period during which our country inflicted severe suffering upon the Chinese people," he said. "This is a deep sorrow to me. When the war ended, our people, in deep self-reproach that this kind of war should never occur again, firmly resolved to tread the road of peace."

The emperor could now go one step further and offer a more forceful apology for all crimes committed in his family's name. Such a gesture would be far more definitive and meaningful than any statement issued by a Japanese politician. It's time for both Japan and its neighbors to move on.

SYDNEY: Three grandmothers from three different countries, speaking no common language, they had traveled far to protest outside the Japanese consulate here Wednesday.

What bound them — a 90-year-old Taiwanese from Taipei, a 78-year-old South Korean from Seoul, and an 84- year-old Dutch-Australian from Adelaide — was their experiences as sex slaves of Japan's military during World War II.

All three had participated in international conferences for Japan's former sex slaves before. But on Wednesday, just days after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan denied the military's role in coercing the women into servitude, the three were united in their fury.

"I was taken away by force by Japanese officers, and a Japanese military doctor forced me to undress to examine me before I was taken away," said Wu Hsiu-mei, 90, who had landed here the night before after a daylong flight from Taipei. "How can Abe lie to the world like that?"

Abe's denial drew official protests from China, Taiwan, South Korea and the Philippines, some of the countries from which the sex slaves were taken. They pushed back to the forefront a dark chapter of Japan's wartime history that, despite an increasingly well- organized international network of activists, seemed destined to lose its raw power along with the dwindling population of former sex slaves now mostly in their 80s.

The furor highlighted yet again Japan's unresolved history in a region over which it has been ceding influence to China. It has also put at the very center of an emotionally charged debate the United States, which has strongly resisted being drawn into the history disputes roiling East Asia in recent years.

The prime minister's comments resulted from a confluence of events. Abe, a nationalist who had spent his career trying to play down Japan's wartime past, was elected prime minister last fall. At the same time, the Democratic victory in Congress gave impetus to a nonbinding resolution in the House of Representatives that would demand that Japan unequivocally acknowledge and apologize for its sex slaves, known euphemistically as comfort women.

Even as Abe's closest allies pressed him to revise a 1993 government statement that acknowledged the military's role in recruiting the women, three former sex slaves testified in Congress last month. On Monday, Abe said he would keep the 1993 statement but denied its central admission of the military's role, saying that there had been no "coercion, like the authorities breaking into houses and kidnapping" women. He said that private dealers had coerced the women, adding that the House resolution was "not based on objective facts" and he would not apologize even if it were passed.

The resolution calls for Japan to "formally acknowledge, apologize, and accept historical responsibility in a clear and unequivocal manner for its Imperial Armed Force's coercion of young women into sexual slavery."

"Prime Minister Abe is in effect saying that the women are lying," Mike Honda, the Democratic congressman from California who is spearheading the legislation, said in a telephone interview. "I find it hard to believe that he is correct given the evidence uncovered by Japanese historians and the testimony of the comfort women."

Abe's distinction goes to the heart of the debate over state responsibility in Japan during the war. While Abe admitted coercion by private dealers, some of his closest allies in the governing Liberal Democratic Party have dismissed them as prostitutes who volunteered to work in the so-called comfort stations.

Japanese historians, using diaries and testimonies of military officials, as well as official documents from the United States and other countries, have been able to show how the Japanese military was directly or indirectly involved in coercing, deceiving, luring, sometimes kidnapping outright young women throughout its Asian colonies and occupied territories. As many as 200,000 comfort women are estimated to have served in stations that were often an intrinsic part of military operations. But Abe's allies point out there are no official Japanese government documents showing the military's role in recruiting the women.

In 1995, a private fund was set up to compensate the sex slaves, but many women refused to accept any money because they saw the fund's nongovernment nature as a way for Tokyo to avoid taking direct responsibility. Only 285 women have accepted money from this fund, which will be terminated at the end of this month.

According to historians, the military established the comfort stations to boost morale among its troops, but also to prevent rapes of local women and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases among soldiers. Japan's deep fear of rampaging soldiers also led it to establish brothels with Japanese prostitutes across Japan for American soldiers during the postwar U.S. Occupation — a fact that complicates American involvement in the current debate.

"An apology is the most important thing we want — an apology that comes from the government, not only a personal one — because this would give us back our dignity," said Jan Ruff O'Herne, 84, who testified in Congress last month.

Ruff was living with her family in Java, in the former Dutch East Indies, when Japan invaded in 1942. After she had spent the first two years in a prison camp, she said, Japanese officers came one day in 1944. They forced single girls to line up and eventually picked 10 of them, including Ruff who was 21 years old at the time.

"On the first night, it was a high- ranking officer," Ruff said. "He had a beautiful sword — I can see it as clearly as if it were yesterday."

"It was so well organized," she said. "A military doctor came to our house regularly to examine us against venereal diseases, and I tell you before I was examined, the doctor raped me first — that's how well organized it was."

In Japan's colonies, historians say, the military worked closely with locals to recruit women or relied on them completely.

In Taiwan, Wu said she was 23 years old and working as a maid in a hotel in 1940, when her Taiwanese boss handed her to Japanese officers. She and some 15 other women were then transported in a Japanese warship from Kaohsiung in southern Taiwan to Guangdong in southern China.

Inside a hotel, the comfort station was managed by a Taiwanese but served only Japanese military, Wu said. As she was forced to have sex with more than 20 Japanese a day for almost a year, Wu had abortions and became sterile.

In Pyongyang, in what is now North Korea, Gil Won Ok, 78, said she had lined up outside a Japanese military base to look for work in her early teens. A Korean man, she said, approached her with the promise of factory work, but she eventually found herself in a comfort station in northeast China.

After she caught syphilis and developed tumors, Gil said, a Japanese military doctor removed her uterus. "I've felt dead inside since I was 15," said Gil, who was 16 when the war ended.

Ever since a Korean woman spoke in 1992 about her experiences as a sex slave and broke the silence, other women in several countries, assisted by private organizations, have revealed details about their lives during and after the war.

Like many of the women, Gil was unable to bear children and never married. She found herself in South Korea, separated from her family in the North; she took all sorts of jobs to survive.

One day, an unmarried woman for whom she had prepared seaweed soup gave birth to a boy, whom Gil immediately adopted. The son, now 49, is a Methodist minister and has his own family.

In Taiwan, Wu married twice, each time hiding her background. Somehow the husbands found out, and the marriages ended unhappily.

As for Ruff, she returned to the prison camp in Java after her release from the comfort station. Her parents swore her to silence. But it is at the camp that she met her future husband, Tom Ruff, one of the British soldiers who had been deployed to guard the camp after Japan's defeat. She told him her story once before they were married — long before they would have two daughters and migrate to Australia.

"But I needed to talk about it," Ruff said. "I could never talk to my husband about it. I loved Tom and I wanted to marry and I wanted a house. I wanted a family, I wanted children, but I didn't want sex. He had to be very patient with me. He was a good husband. But because we couldn't talk about it, it made it all so hard."

"You could talk to Dad about it," said her daughter Carol, 55.

"No, this is what I keep saying," Ruff said. "I just told him the story once. It was never talked about again. For that generation, the story was too big. My mum couldn't cope with it. My dad couldn't cope with it. Tom couldn't cope with it. They just shut it up. But nowadays, you'll get counseling immediately."

"You don't know how hard it was to carry this enormous burden inside you, that you would like to scream out to the world, and yet you cannot," Ruff said. "But I remember telling Carol, one day, I'm going to tell my story and people will be interested."